


Bend

by evil_bunny_king



Series: Of the Sun [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abora Lavellan, Developing Relationship, F/M, Painting, Solas POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 17:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3987079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He paints what she leaves in her wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bend

It was a canvas, of sorts. The brush strokes sank into the plaster, lines of colour smoothed into its pocked surface, building the design that had lingered in his thoughts since the destruction of Haven. Welling through his fingers, it was animate, a concept willing itself into being. A dance half-remembered but strengthening with every breath.

The style was a suitable irony, if fed by the pain that was a constant at the edge of his thoughts. The tradition could only be found in the few frescoes that had survived the millennia, now scattered and mouldering in the forgotten places of the People. Ironic, that he alone could preserve it - and that he dared.

(Twice his short-sightedness had brokered disaster. The memories of both now told themselves in the vibrancy of the paint: a long withheld confession written in an abandoned tongue)

Flecks of drying paint littered his tunic, splinters from the raw wood of the scaffold digging into his knees, but he paid them no heed, strung into the fresco as its vision unfolded before him.

_Clouds burning into shadow. Bright sparks of reality pulsing in spears through the mountains-_

The style was fitting. The paintings would embody the renaissance that it marked - one wrenched back, at last, from the bloodied mires of history. A rebirth, if you will (for you cannot revive a corpse, particularly one so long since desiccated); one told through the actions of the dalish who heralded it: unwitting, defiant,  _determined_.

(Fierce smiles and pointed jests, and the strength to survive the  _dread wolf’s_ bite, the trophy of the struggle lodged deep in her mortal palm)

He’d watched as she’d harnessed the anchor’s violence to finally mend the rendered veil, reknitting the weave of the ancient magics as if it was little more than yarn, and it was then his fingers had first itched, reaching for paint and easel.

To mark the validation of despairing hope; to deny the fears that had choked his thoughts ever since he’d discovered the Magister gone, and the focus with him. A confession, a record. A promise.

_(Liar)_

 

Another moment. (Redcliffe). In the instant she had defied her destruction, a blur of fury and steel tumbling out of time itself - and magnificent as she’d stalked forward, heedless of the blood smeared from forehead to cheek and dripping across the thorns of her vallaslin.

She was marked as vengeance, Dalish,  _elf_ , and yet, as he was increasingly realising, she’d settle for none.

(She was the one thing he would never paint)

**Author's Note:**

> Thesis break. So it’s another character study because I find those satisfying and I need something positive and doable right now… :x Short, because of time restrictions. Lots of half-said things in this. And self-mockery. Nice smattering of denial. <3
> 
> Technically 'Open Wide' verse, but may become AU once the plot for that fully settles in. >:3 Works with the 'Of the Sun' series in any case.


End file.
